unemployment

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The New Underclass

February 20, 2012 in job search, recession, recovery, unemployment by boxcarkids | 7 comments

That’s what they are calling the long-term unemployed.  The new underclass.  If you still have a job, at one time or another you’ve probably thought (or submitted a comment ), “Just get a job!”  If you still have a job, you might think the economic recovery, weak though it is, means that everyone who lost their job should be able to find a new one by now.  It’s not happening.

There are over 4 MILLION people who are classified as long term unemployed (people who have been out of work for more than a year).  We make up 40 percent of the unemployed.  We could fill the 15 largest football stadiums in the US and more than 2.5 million people would be stuck in the parking lots.  That’s a lot of people.

Employers are adding jobs, it’s true.  But it’s a fact that employers are also actively discriminating against the unemployed.  As this article from USA Today says “some companies — including PMG Indiana, Sony Ericsson and retailers nationwide — have explicitly barred the unemployed or long-term unemployed from certain job openings, outright telling them in job ads that they need not apply.”  This discrimination has become so obvious and widespread that some areas (e.g., New Jersey, Chicago) are proposing to ban companies from rejecting prospective employees based on current employment status or bad credit.

This issue is getting more attention lately.  Both this artice in the Business Insider (The Truth About the Long Term Unemployed) and this recent 60 Minutes segment (A new jobs program for people trapped in unemployment) do a good job of showing some of the people behind the numbers.  As 60 Minutes says, “These folks have been out of work two years, three, even four. They’re college educated professionals in their 40′s or 50′s; people who thought their company would take them all the way to retirement.”

The people interviewed for these stories used to belong to the middle class.  They had college degrees, homes, cars, and have had gainful employment their entire working lives.  Then they lost their jobs and their lives imploded.  They have applied for hundreds, even thousands of jobs.  They’ve gone back to school and ‘reinvented’ themselves.  They’ve networked and pounded the pavement, and are willing to take any job.  They just can’t find one.  And, seriously folks, it’s NOT their fault.

 

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The Ills of Poverty

February 9, 2012 in children in need, Despair, Family, foreclosure, frugal living, health, hopelessness, Hunger, poverty, recession, unemployment, uninsured by boxcarkids | 2 comments

Living in poverty is hard – perhaps that’s why there are so many words related to hard that can be applied to a life of poverty – hard time, hardship, hardscrabble, hard luck, hard pressed, hard row to hoe, hard-hearted…it’s just hard.  Most of us can deal with some hard in our lives – we get going when the going gets tough; we keep our chin up and maintain a stiff upper lip; we shoulder our burden.  We retain hope.  This is an excellent short term strategy.  But over the long term living in poverty gets progressively more difficult.

The ills of poverty are varied and numerous.  Some people begin life in poverty and never leave it.  They are racially segregated and poorly educated.  They work hard at menial labor in unsafe conditions, living from payday to payday at the best of times.  They possess little in the way of material goods and live perpetually in debt.  Their dwellings are poor and overcrowded.  They may be malnourished and probably have physical ills that have never been treated.  They might have fallen victim to crime or substance abuse.  They reproduce and die young.

Strangely this description of life in the tenements of New York at the turn of the last century can be just as well applied to many Americans at the turn of this century.  And with the Great Recession leaving scores of formerly middle class families homeless, without regular income, and without medical insurance, the likelihood is that this description will be aptly applied to even more people.

Poverty in the U.S. grew substantially more common during the last decade, with hardships increasing for millions of people and their families, especially with regard to food, medical care and housing.  (Poverty, Hardship and Families: How Many People Are Poor, and What Does Being Poor in America Really Mean?)

Poverty has been associated with numerous physical, mental and social ills in any number of studies.  People living in poverty today are more likely to be ‘food insecure’ or have to forego purchasing needed prescription medicines or visit doctors.  Children in poverty are more like to suffer abuse.  Depression abounds amongst the poor, so much so that studies have questioned which comes first – does depression cause one to fall into an impoverished lifestyle, or does being poor make one depressed?

I daresay some people, depressed to the point of being unable to maintain social ties and good work habits, descend with their depression into poverty.  Yet I also believe that the constant ongoing stress of being financially insecure, on the verge of homelessness, and unable to find employment is a clear cause of depression.  The strain and anxiety, the insomnia and irritability, the worry and shame, they all eat at one, dragging one down in an increasingly steep spiral, until it requires a near Herculean effort just to get up in the morning.

You might think having children would inoculate you against depression.  It doesn’t.  It gets you out of bed in the morning but if anything thinking about your children, the material and social advantages that you cannot give them, the insecurities and privations they endure, and your anxiety about their futures, the concern that you may be causing them incalculable harm, merely serves to contribute to your burden and diminish your sense of self-worth.  When you are poor you feel very much alone.

Poverty, like smoking, accidents or obesity, has even been found to be a cause of death in America.  In an article published in the American Journal of Public Health, researchers found that in the year 2000 poverty caused nearly 300,000 deaths (compared to about 120,000 deaths per year caused by accidents).  I suspect that number will only increase.

Money Management – Part 1: The Big Picture

January 24, 2012 in economy, frugal living, job search, money, poverty, recession, unemployment by boxcarkids | 5 comments

When you have a small and sporadic income, budgeting isn’t easy.  To be honest, even when I was employed fulltime I was never the poster child for budgeting.  You know how we’re told by all the personal finance gurus that you need to have 6 months worth of living expenses saved in case of an emergency or lay-off?  At best I managed 3 or 4 months.  Periodically I got hooked on some new financial management software or gimmick and, as with exercise programs, followed it religiously for a few months before reverting to old habits.    Money management wasn’t really part of my education – it was one of those subjects that wasn’t discussed much at home and in school the only part of the curriculum that came close was learning to balance a checkbook in home economics class.

Nevertheless I was relatively responsible in how I handled my money – tucking some away in savings, never coming close to the extravagant credit limit on my cards, and paying my bills on time.  I did enjoy browsing through stores and sometimes indulged in a little ‘shopping therapy’ when blue or to mark special occasions in my life.  I had a laid back attitude about money because I had a healthy and regular income.

To say that’s changed is an understatement.  These days financial issues are my biggest stressor.  Nothing keeps me awake late into the night, or makes me as anxious and irritable as wondering about whether I’ll be able to pay the bills.  With over 20 million Americans out of work, I figured others are probably having the same concerns so I went looking for tips and advice.

The blog, Living ‘Poor’ and Loving It, caught my attention by virtue of the title alone as we are living poor and I’m not loving it!  Unfortunately the blog’s author’s three rules consist of 1) Have Very Little Money; 2) Live on it; and 3) Rule 2 will change your life if you let it.  These are rules for people who have some money but live as though they have more.  People who run up their credit cards buying things they don’t need but think they want.  People who need to pare down their expenses by not eating out, buying sporting tickets, and going on vacation.  The author says “My most important money-management tool hasn’t been figuring out how to get more but rather discovering how little I really need and how much I already have.”

Been there, done that. We passed this phase of living poor during the first year after I was laid off.  Thanks to unemployment benefits we were able to ease into being poor (although it didn’t seem like it at the time) and as I detailed in several early blog posts we learned to live with much less – in possessions, space and income.   We gave up eating out, going to movies, subscribing to cable TV.  We clipped coupons, shopped at thrift stores, and ate a lot of beans and rice. If we were careful we could afford small luxuries like buying yearbooks for the kids or eating out on a birthday night.  We made do.  It wasn’t easy but it was bearable.

Now we have entered (sunk to) a new level – with no guaranteed income, some fixed expenses, some variable expenses and the occasional emergency.  We very much live hand to mouth.  My income (mostly from writing and editing jobs and the odd sale of a cat bed) is uncertain, frequently comes in very small amounts and goes as quickly as it comes.  When someone pays you $30 and you have a quarter tank of gas in your car you don’t worry about trying to save – you just head to the gas station.

When I have a slightly larger payment or a windfall I always put aside money for rent, stock up on necessities and use part of it to pay forward on whatever bills I can (after getting caught up on whichever bills I’m behind).  I find that paying two months of internet service, or car insurance, for example, relieves some of my anxiety and a less anxious mom is definitely a good thing for the family!  But sometimes I’m too eager to get caught up and paid forward and am then caught short-handed when, as happened last week, the car battery dies and needs to be replaced or the computer crashes and needs expert care.  Then, with no credit or borrowing power, I need to borrow from the rent money, hoping that another job comes along in time for me to replace it.

I believe we are on the edge of moving from living poor, to survival living.  It’s a scary place to be – I don’t like the view from here.

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